


Moirail-Song

by quartile



Series: Acoustic, Electric [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Post-Retcon Meteor, Quadrant Vacillation, Voyeurism, progressive sexytimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:12:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9579896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quartile/pseuds/quartile
Summary: Alone in the ablution block, you blast the shower stream over your head. You wish that conversation had gone differently.Kanaya must think I’m a deviant.Why do I want these things?Why do I have to be broken?Step out, dry off.It doesn’t matter what she thinks.He makes me feel good. He makes me feel real.





	

**Karkat: Broach the subject.**

You and Kanaya are on your second lap of power-walking the meteor’s surface when you finally bring it up. “Kanaya, do you think it’s possible to have the same person in more than one quadrant?”

She swings her arms, taking long-legged strides. “Certainly. I don’t mean to overshare, but Rose and I have been vacillating from matesprits to moirails and back for quite some time now.”

“I’m not talking about vacillation,” you say. “I mean, do you think someone could be your matesprit and your moirail at the same time? Or your matesprit and your kismesis?”

“At the same time?” You can’t tell whether her expression is one of perplexity or disgust. “No, of course not. How would that even work? How could you simultaneously pity and hate the same person?” 

“Okay, maybe that’s a bad example,” you say. “But couldn’t you feel both flushed-red and pale-red for someone, all at once?”

Kanaya breaks her stride briefly to look your way. “Are you attempting to be funny?”

“Not on purpose,” you say. “But thanks.”

Your ordinarily cool-headed friend picks up the pace, agitating the air with her hands. “Karkat. Think about it. It makes no sense. You can’t pacify someone while you’re, well, pailing them. It’s not the same shade of red at all.” She weighs the air up and down like a pair of scales. “The quadrants are orderly. Practical. Purposeful. How are you supposed to know where you stand with your quadrantmates if you’re trying to be—” she mashes her palms together and shudders “—two things at once?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, forget I asked. It couldn’t work.” You shove your hands in your pockets. You must have misread her. You thought for sure she’d understand.

At the end of lap two, she stops to stretch her calves. “Where is this coming from?”

“Chalk it up to having too much time to think about stupid things, I guess. More grade A hoofbeast shit, entering via the giant hole that this pointless journey has bored into my thinkpan.” 

A door swings out from the building you’re leaning against, and Dave steps out. “Hey,” he says, looking from you to Kanaya. “Sorry to interrupt.” He touches your arm. “Dude, I’m going to go mix some tunes. I’ll be in the usual place if you want to come hang out.”

“Sure,” you say. “I could use a time-out.” Dave nods and disappears inside. 

“Thanks for the walk,” you say to Kanaya.

She looks past you toward the door that’s just closed. “Karkat. I know he’s special to you. But one quadrant at a time is enough. It has to be.”

\--

Alone in the ablution block, you blast the shower stream over your head. You wish that conversation had gone differently.

_Kanaya must think I’m a deviant._  
_Why do I want these things?_  
_Why do I have to be broken?_

Step out, dry off. 

_It doesn’t matter what she thinks._  
_He makes me feel good. He makes me feel real._

Clothes on. Shoes on.

_I want to wake up in his arms._  
_I want to wreck him, make him lose control._  
_I want our friendship, too. I want all of it._

Head out of the ablution block. 

_I just want to be near._

Back up. Grab an extra towel or two.

\--

**Karkat: Take a time-out.**

Dave’s lying on the mattress in the time-out room, headphones on. He taps out a syncopated rhythm on his legs.

“I know I took a while, just wanted to hit the shower—” you begin. But he doesn’t respond. You wave a hand in front of his shades. Nothing. His eyes must be closed. His music’s loud enough that you can hear beats coming through the headphones. He hasn’t heard you come in.

He doesn’t know you’re here, looking at him. The realization sends a shiver down your posture pole. You sit on the floor and let yourself watch him. 

It’s captivating to see him this way. Lost in his music, not putting up his coolkid front, it’s just him, the true Dave, keeping time with every atom. His prone body matches the rhythm with a bob of the head, a sway of the shoulders. His lips move, whispering syllables to the beat. His hands flutter off his thighs to spin imaginary discs in the air. 

Before they can alight, you capture one between your palms. 

He’s startled until he sees it’s you. The corner of his mouth turns up, and he makes room for you on the mattress. “Hey.” 

“Hey.” You make yourself comfortable. “What are you working on?”

“Nothing much. Cookin’ a few things together to see how they flow. Check it.” He unplugs the headphones and the room fills with warped, percolating sounds. “I spent some time recording the sounds from the ectobiology tanks. Adds a nice texture.” 

You listen. “It’s moody. Like, marshy, if you know what I mean. You could layer something choppy on top to break up the atmosphere.”

He lowers the volume a notch. “So hey,” he says. “Confession. I didn’t ask you here to talk about music.” 

“Color me shocked.” You take his shades off, set them to one side. You trace his lips with your fingers, then lean in to nip at his mouth. 

Before Dave, you thought kissing was supposed to be a sharp, urgent clash of fangs and tongues. When Terezi caught your lip on her fangs and laughed, you thought the roughness was part of the deal. Dave, though... you’d had no idea how many ways there were to kiss, until Dave.

Sometimes he dots your lips with feather-light kisses that tickle. Sometimes he laps at your mouth as if you’re an ice cream cone and he’s trying to make you last. Sometimes he pushes his way past your fangs and groans with desire as your tongues collide, or opens to you and lets you take your time tasting him. All the while making sweet, needy sounds that make you want to stop the clock and stay in this moment forever.

He breaks off. “We should slow down,” he says. You’ve tangled yourselves in snuggleplanes, your hands in his hair, his thumbs caressing the velvet at the base of your horns.

“That’s a stupid idea,” you say.

“It isn’t stupid, it’s for you. And you’re hurting my feelings. Why you gotta be like that?” He blinks enormous ruby eyes at you. “Baby, don’t hurt me no more.”

“You big faker. Show me where I hurt you,” you reply.

“Here.” He points to his blood pusher. You lift his shirt, place a kiss on his chest.

He touches his lips. “Here.” You kiss him thoroughly.

“Karkat?”

“What, you showboating, sentimental pity party?”

He gestures toward his ass, grinning.

\--

Once he stops laughing and you’ve calmed down from your predictable shit fit, he makes it up to you with a shoulder rub. You sigh as he works on your neck and upper back.

“You make me feel real,” you say.

“I want to make you feel amazing,” he says, moving to lie beside you. “Can I try?” You nod, suddenly dry-mouthed and wordless.

He cups your bulge, giving you a squeeze before undoing your fly. His hand moves inside your boxers and you spread your legs, giving your bulge room to slither out and around his wrist. And then his strong, slender fingers are tapping and teasing the entrance to your throbbing nook. 

“Is this too much? Should I stop?” 

“Nuh-uh,” you say intelligently. With one fluid movement, he slides a finger in and starts stroking you gently as you rock against his hand. Your bulge clenches and pulsates around his wrist. It’s intense and perfect and you tell him so when you’re not moaning in pleasure.

“I’m so into you, babe,” he murmurs, “wanna see you lose it, wanna make you feel so good.” 

Your hand finds its way into his god tier trousers, down to his ass, where you feel for the little pucker. You press it experimentally. He freezes up, lets out a low groan, and hides his face in your shoulder.

“Dave? Still with me? Did I find the Off button?”

He’s trembling. “I’m not supposed to want... that...”

“Forget ‘supposed to.’ How does it feel?”

“I don’t know.” He takes a deep breath. “Please don’t stop yet.”

Carefully, you press until your fingertip barely enters him. “Fuck,” he says. “I can’t think. Oh shit. Fuck.”

You move. Something contracts and releases around you. “I’m not supposed to want this,” he says again. He’s pushing back against you, driving you deeper. Your finger goes in to the second joint and he groans. You can’t help but imagine how it would feel to have your bulge writhing inside him. 

You’re growling uncontrollably. “It’s okay. It’s just me. I got you.”

He’s shuddering and shaking. _He’s beautiful._ His still hand is warm against your nook. You push your free hand down the front of his trousers and stroke his human bulge. You don’t need a single thing from the universe except to watch him come apart. 

“I want... oh fuck, it’s too good... Karkat, fuck, please, please, just like that, I want it, I want you—” he arches away, his eyelids are fluttering—“I’m gonna come, Karkat, I love you—I love you—”

\--

**Gamzee: Sidle.**

Cold tin tubes sing clank clank. Shimmy over common block and sleep block and food block. You creeping gnawbeast in cold tin tubes over miraculous pans. They maybe doze. You never.

Gut growls empty. Clang sings a panel you dislocate. Drop all stealthy into food block. Glide hand over clone box. Do it grubpaste? Do it sauce? Impress button utter incantation whizz whirr ping. Blup. Not unlike grubpaste. Fistfuls in your maw. Better. Can think.

Pipe song bites your hearing. Rasp and chatter. Whose? You know. You know his grit and squeak. Pale crab brother. Erstwhile pale pal. Do he sleep yet? Fine fair shadesbro aims to lull him. Tall blank boy never tears his eyes from brother crab.

Must be red. Must be nice.

Up into tunnel. Slither squirm seek. Track and trace. Talk titillates tympani. You intake as they commune. Never your raspy brother so downy-voiced. Never the blank boy so joy-tongueful. Their riff-speak dissolves. Only notes. Only pleas.

Slip soft-toed to hall. Peep past cuddle den drape. Behold lip lick tongue. Behold skin bless skin. Behold writhe and undulate. Beauty o miraculous luscious vision. Bare fang bare throat outcry. Raw lovely observing. Juice gush sate.

Not yours. Remember. Not your Karbro. His.

\--

**Rose: Learn something new about trolls.**

“Rosita bonita,” Dave greets you as he moseys into the common room. “Mind if I treat our ears to a little somethin’-somethin’?”

“Do keep the volume reasonably low, lest my muse flee in terror,” you say. All you’ve been doing for the past half-hour is rearranging punctuation and fixing grammar in the story you’re working on, but he doesn’t need to know that. You could invent a grammar muse if need be. Emdash of the Split Infinitive.

“It’ll be so low, this baby could win a limbo contest. They’ll notch the pole closer and closer to the ground. The crowd’s losing its collective mind over how low this volume can go.” He presses play and takes a coffee mug off the shelf, pouring himself some juice.

You resume your contemplation of two sentences giving you grief. You try separating them with a period. Too abrupt. You change it to a semicolon. Is that better? Or does it lack confidence? You delete it.

Dave hums along with his music, an impressive feat considering there’s no discernible melody. Overlaid on a decelerated, patchy amen break drum loop, there’s a _blup-blup_ sound like percolating mud, a grainy rumble you can’t place, and a series of repeating chords that start in one key and resolve in another. You’re surprised at how well it works. 

“What’s this one called?” you ask.

He puts the mug on the table. “This newborn’s got no name. Just a shuffle of some stuff I’m into. Like it?”

“It’s not repellent,” you say. 

He smirks. “Easy on the rave reviews, I don’t want to peak too young.” He goes to the shelf, takes down another mug, pours juice. Absently puts it down. Maybe the first one is for someone else? 

Dave putters around the common room. Out of the corner of your eye, you catch him straightening pillows on the sofa, carrying mugs to the sink. He’s... cheerful. That’s what it is. He’s happy. You’re pretty sure.

You save your file. “You’re in a chipper mood,” you prompt. “Might I inquire as to the reason?”

“No reason. I woke up like this. Maybe we passed through a lucky constellation or something.” He finds a mug in the cabinet and pours himself some juice. That’s three. 

You say, “Something’s on your mind. Something big and important, I’d wager.”

“Okay, which of your magical seer powers leads you to think so?” he says.

In response, you look pointedly at the mugs on the table, then at the one in his hand. You try not to laugh as he realizes what he’s done. “I couldn’t say for sure where you’ve gone, but you’re certainly not here.”

The transportalizer glimmers and Kanaya steps out. She comes to read over your shoulder. After a moment, she taps a polished claw on your screen. “You are missing a stop-dot there.”

“Perhaps. You don’t think a semicolon would be more effective?”

“No. The stop-dot-pause-curl is too permeable. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. You want nice, clear sentences that say what they mean. You want—wait.” Her eyes go wide as she becomes aware of the background music. “What are we listening to?”

“A concoction of Dave’s,” you say. He tilts his head in acknowledgment.

Kanaya stands very still. “Dave,” she says. “Where did you get the troll sounds?”

“My man Karkat came up with that,” he says. “Hits the spot, doesn’t it? Like an ice cold root beer float on a broiling summer afternoon.” 

“But this is—you shouldn’t—Dave, this is not appropriate for common areas,” Kanaya says. “Turn it off at once.”

“What’s the matter?” you ask.

“This is moirail-song,” Kanaya says, utterly embarrassed. “It’s only meant to be shared between moirails. It’s extremely personal. Surely Karkat did not say you could play it for us?”

“He didn’t say not to,” says Dave. 

“You’ve become moirails with Karkat?” you ask. “So _that’s_ what’s making you so giddy. Congratulations, you’ve leveled up. What shall we call this stage? ‘It’s About Fucking Time’? ‘Land of Body Heat and Biological Clockwork’?”

“First of all, shut up, Lalonde. Second, nobody calls me giddy and gets away with it. Third, not that it’s your business, but me and Karkat aren’t moirails. Don’t fence us in, man, labels are for soup cans.”

“I wouldn’t dream of labeling whatever close, personal bond you’re exploring with Karkat,” you say. “This is your journey of discovery, and if you’ve finally mustered the courage to reject the homophobic subtext you’ve pressed to your bosom like Holy Writ all your life, I say, more power to you.”

“Hey! Not discussing it with you,” says Dave. Meanwhile, your thoroughly scandalized girlfriend is glowing jade green and covering her ears.

Something connects in your mind. “I know where I’ve heard this before. This sounds a lot like you, darling, when we’re—”

“Yes, yes, Rose. That is quite enough. Dave, turn it off.” 

\--

**Karkat: Receive kudos.**

“Congratulations on capturing the _rara avis,_ ” says Rose the next time you pass her in the hallway. 

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” you retort. She just smiles and keeps walking.

\--

**Karkat: Listen.**

You push your headphones off one ear. “Quit drumming on the floor, I’m trying to get this mix right,” you say to Dave in the time-out room.

“It’s not me,” he says. “I think there’s someone outside.”

You turn down the volume and sure enough, someone is tapping urgently at the door. Dave stands, checks the window, then opens the door. Rose lingers in the hallway.

“I am so sorry to impose,” she begins. “But Kanaya is quite upset and won’t tell me what the matter is. I’ve tried everything and I’m just making it worse.”

“I can come talk to her,” you offer, handing Dave the headphones.

“Would you?” says Rose. Her usual self-assuredness is missing. “Can you come now?”

She leads you to a room you haven’t visited before. Kanaya and Rose have a tiny, cozy space of their own near the common room. Their mattress takes up most of the floor and is piled with velvet pillows and knit throws. Lamps cast light up at the ceiling, giving the room a daylight-like glow. In the middle of this lies Kanaya, curled on her side, hugging a pillow to her chest.

“Kanaya?” says Rose. “Karkat is here.” _Please do something,_ her eyes say.

“Hey,” you say, kneeling on the mattress next to Kanaya. You stroke her hair. “Hey there. What’s going on? Want to talk about it?” Kanaya shakes her head.

“Are you in pain, darling?” says Rose. “Is your scar hurting?”

“Please just... give me space, Rose,” says Kanaya. 

Rose deflates. She reaches out, then thinks better of it. “I’ll be in my room if you need me.” You’re not sure if she’s speaking to you or Kanaya. She backs out and lets the door close.

“She’s gone, Kanaya,” you say. You touch her cheek. When she doesn’t flinch, you pap her face. “Can I do anything for you?”

She sniffles. “Hold me?” she says in a very small voice. You lie next to her, make sure there’s a snuggleplane keeping her warm, and pet her hair to calm her down. 

Jade green tears well up. She wipes them away with an embroidered handkerchief. “Do you remember...” she falters.

“It’s okay, I’m listening,” you say.

“Do you remember what we talked about—how you asked about having the same person in more than one quadrant? And I said one quadrant should be enough?”

“I remember.”

Her anguish is nearly palpable. “Karkat... I think I have to change my answer.” 

It hurts to see her so upset. And you, of course, know exactly what she’s going through. “It’s okay. It’s confusing and it sucks, but only for a little while. I know Rose cares as much for you as you do for her.”

The tears spill down her face. “She switches from red to pale to red like _that,_ ” snapping her fingers. “She doesn’t see why it’s wrong. But she can’t just do that. She can’t just treat me like—like a moirail one moment, saying sweet things and holding my hand, and then just flip flushed-red and start kissing me and touching me and making me feel so—” her hands ball into fists. “And then, then I start doing it, and it feels good but I know it’s wrong. It’s wrong.”

“Can I ask you something?” you say. She nods. “What if—what if all this were true, but you weren’t able to judge it?”

Her brow wrinkles. “What do you mean?”

“Well, like, what if you weren’t capable of thinking, ‘This is wrong’? Everything else is the same—she’s vacillating all over the place, holding your hand, being affectionate with you—which, seriously, if anybody deserves it, it’s you, Kanaya—but you aren’t able to think ‘It’s wrong of her to do this and it’s wrong of me to accept it’?”

“I don’t know...?” Kanaya looks genuinely puzzled. “I suppose I would feel... good? No, how can I not think what I think? How can it be okay for me to be okay with this?”

“It’s hard,” you say. “I’m not saying it isn’t.”

You continue to pet her hair. Eventually, she says, “Karkat, when will this be over?” She clutches the pillow as if it’s a cherished grubdoll. “I want to go home.”

You cradle her head to your chest. “Shoosh. We’ll get there. We’ll rebuild and we’ll make it better than home. You’ll see.”

“Nothing makes any sense here,” she says. “Nothing’s anything I can understand. I want to go home.”

\--

Later, you relocate her to the common room, seating her on the sofa and bringing her a cup of tea. You’re reading a classic Alternian romance aloud to her when Dave appears on the transportalizer.

“Anyone want to watch a movie, or are you two engrossed in storytime?” he asks.

“This is so much better than a movie,” you say. “Two love triangles, some very exciting fight scenes, gripping political intrigue, subtle and sensitive characters. You should stay and listen. You might learn something about how romance really works.”

“Karkat’s doing all the voices,” adds Kanaya. “Stay.”

Dave says, “Ain’t no schooling this Strider on romance,” but he takes a seat on the bench anyway.

“What are you doing way over there? Sit with us.” You scoot next to Kanaya on the sofa so he can sit.

Dave looks hesitant. “I didn’t know if—” he glances over at Kanaya meaningfully.

“It’s cool. She knows, she gets us. Come on, I want you near.” 

He relents, moving to sit next to you. Kanaya smiles and reaches over to pat his knee. You lift his arm to drape it around your shoulders, find your place on the page, and resume the story.


End file.
